183: Scale, Build Your Team, and Outsource Remote Workers with Nathan Hirsch

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert plank Show episode 183 scale, build your team and outsource remote workers with Nathan Hersh. Hi, everyone and welcome back to the Robert plank show we talked about building an online business and making money we're talking with Nathan Hersh, Nathan Hirsch, and he's a serial entrepreneur and expert in remote hiring and E commerce. He's the founder and CEO of free up calm and the co founder and CEO of portlight Nathan that shared his ecommerce career on the Amazon marketplace and successfully built a $7 million dollar business within four years after seeing the potential of using remote workers within his first business Nathan founded free up to make the remote hiring experience simpler for all e commerce business owners free up now provides reliable ecommerce workers to hundreds of clients around the world. And they fit as an expert at building efficient systems and processes, sales strategies and business management. He currently lives in Orlando, Florida, Mr. Nathan, how are things today?

Unknown Speaker 1:01 I'm doing great. How

Robert Plank 1:02 are you? super fantastic, better than ever and excited to talk about these two things, serial entrepreneurship and E commerce. So you can you kind of tell us where you how you got started. And what happened there.

Speaker 2 1:14 Yeah, I've kind of had an interesting ride that I feel like I stumbled upon by accident, I was back back in 2007 ish, I was a broke college student looking to make a little extra beer money on the side. And I had all these textbooks that I was getting hundreds of dollars on selling them back for pennies. At the end of the semester, I got pretty pissed at the bookstore. And I saw all my friends getting ripped off too. So I was like, alright, I'll start my own mini business and try to cut out the bookstore. And it ended up going really well. I would buy everyone's textbooks back at the end of the semester, hold on to them, sell them again at the beginning of the next semester. And I did that for a few semesters and made a good amount of money on the side. And from there books led me to Amazon because back then Amazon was mostly a bookstore, and they were just getting into selling other products. And what I did is I learned that you can sell a lot more than just books on Amazon. And back then, or actually, right now if you go and you find a Barbie, or Lego or whatever it is on Amazon, there's 100 sellers, when I first started, there are only two or three different people. And I was one of them. So I really got in at the beginning. And from there, I got really into the Drop Shipping model, because I hated carrying around textbooks all day. So I wanted a different way where I didn't actually have to touch the product. So I built a huge drop shipping business out of my college dorm room, where I had college students filling orders and answering customer emails, sending products from different retailers and manufacturers that we weren't actually touching. So that's kind of how I started my first business and got into being an entrepreneur and being a boss and hiring people. And that whole aspect of my life.

Robert Plank 2:47 And that's cool. And there's a lot of little things that are that are really interesting about at that story. I mean, the first thing that I that I'm kind of hearing as far as the the business that you set up in the need that you served, you kind of just just sort of like filled the gap and cut out the middleman. And if you think about a lot of the big, you know, huge startups now, like you think about like your Uber or Airbnb type of type of companies, like they're kind of having the same sort of thought process, right, like the existing model or the existing way of going about things. And in your case, it was, you know, buying these, you know, 200 or $300 college textbooks and how to sell them back for, you know, $10. And so you looked at that and said, well, the current system is broken. And let me figure out a better way by by sort of cutting out the middleman and the other thing that I'm hearing for, for you doing this business and you're doing the drop shipping stuff, like there's something to sort of getting there early. Right. And I mean, like like you said, like the the Amazon ecommerce thing is really huge and really big now and built up. But then the cost, the price you pay for that is that now it's super crowded. And so there's there's definitely it sounds like there's something too, getting there early where where the whatever marketplace you're playing in, maybe is not proven yet, and maybe is kind of the the Wild West. But if you get there early, and you figure out some of the the kinks of the system out yourself, then you can get there before it's it's super, super crowded there.

Speaker 2 4:13 I agree. And there's really two ways to go about building a business. You either learn from other people and you try to copy them, which ends up like what you said, and you end up in a very crowded industry. And there isn't always enough cash to go around. Or you look and you try to target a business that yes, that business makes money. But does it actually make the customer happy? And like you mentioned Uber, people have been using taxis for years, but have you ever heard someone is like I love that taxi ride. It was awesome. No one was having that experience. And the same thing with bookstores. Everyone needed to buy books, but no one liked the bookstores they always thought like they were getting ripped off but they weren't getting their money back at the end. So if you can identify businesses that people have to use or that use a lot but aren't making the end consumer happy. That's a really good place to go in and make change

Robert Plank 4:58 like that. And there's Yeah, there's so many examples that especially like, I mean, Google right now is trying to, you know, put the the cell phone companies out of business. So I like the way I like your mindset about that. And I like the way that that sort of your criteria is something where, you know, everyone uses it. So it's, it's proven, but the customer is, the customers are unhappy, which means that it's about to kind of reach a tipping point, or it's about to change or some change has to happen. And you can be the person who kind of swoops in and does that.

Speaker 2 5:26 Yeah, and you can look at it both sides. I mean, customer service is my background before starting my business within customer service, which gave me a huge advantage, especially on Amazon. But if you're starting a business, make sure customer service is your core, because if you're not making your end customer happy, eventually someone else is going to find a way to do it.

Robert Plank 5:44 Right. And the other thing that I've heard about that story that you had there is that well, at first, it sounds like it was all you right, and then you took on some people, and then you kind of scaled it from there. And what it reminded me of was, uh, like, when Jeff Bezos was first starting Amazon, he would literally take take books and packages and things, and he would take the packages to the post office himself. And so there's something to that, right, there's something to you being like being like the employee, and you're doing all these things. And then once it kind of maxes out your time, then it becomes time to go in and bring more people on. Yeah, for

Speaker 2 6:21 the first few semesters that I was doing textbooks, I was the one carrying the book, selling them back handling all the money in the transactions for the first year or so doing my Amazon dropship business, I was filling every order answering every email, creating the processes and systems. And when I well, it wasn't a friend of mine at the time, but a guy in one of my classes, Facebook messaged me being like, hey, I need a job. I heard you have this business, I have no idea what you do. But I'd love to be involved. His name's Connor Gilligan. And he's been my business partner for eight years, he really got involved by accident on that point, and really helped me grow the business and take to the next level after I'd already done everything, myself. And because I done the customer service and the orders and the finding retailers and manufacturers and every part of the business, it just makes it that much easier to train other people that do it and put and surround yourself by people who are the opposite of you that can take what you've built so far, and take it to the next level in a way that you can't do.

Robert Plank 7:15 Right. And I like your thought presses on that. And so, I mean, what do you think about? So do you have any kind of set? I don't know what how to even like, explain this. But do you have a set like period of time or something or like a trial period? Where if you're, if you're making a new business, like how do you decide like, how much of it to do yourself? And how do you decide how long to do it yourself until until you begin looking into bringing other people in.

Speaker 2 7:42 It's tough and there isn't an exact formula. And I have a lot of so my new company Freon which we'll talk about a little while offers kind of like those lower level and upper level workers. But my point in this conversation is you can be a business that maybe you found it in, in a certain industry. And you do hire those high end consultants to take the next level. Or you can be the kind of person that I am that is more, I guess, frugal and create every single system and sell himself or herself and then put cheaper, more strategic people in place to kind of follow your directions and your processes. And I know a lot of people who have had success in both ways, I'm more of the mentality that I need to get to a large point where I'm doing over a million dollars in sales a year before I'm hiring these consultants to really take me to the next level, because I want to prove it to myself prove that my clients or my customers actually want to buy the product that the systems work that the customer service is there and put smaller people in place and the bigger people later, but I do work with a lot of clients who do it a little bit backwards. They want to they have the extra cash or the funding or whatever it is, and they want to scale their business faster, and take on more risk, in my opinion, and hire those larger level consultants or talented people up front.

Robert Plank 8:51 And how would someone decide on on which way of like, you know, building it up versus replacing yourself? I mean, is it the the it's a factor of do if they have the money to spend like a mansion? Or is it like more of a personality? Kind of kind of decision? Or like how would someone decide if they want to go that path or your path?

Speaker 2 9:11 Yeah, I think it's a combination of what the business is and what industry it is and a combination of the skills and then a combination of like you said the cash or the funding, or whatever is backing it. And it really depends on I guess the process that you need to put in place to get to the end and the calculated risks involved. I mean, are you someone like when I was starting my first business, I really didn't have any risks. Worst case scenario, I'm a broke college student, I get a little bit broker and I go out and get a real job. But if you're a family man who has a wife and kid depending on you, are you really going to take that huge risk and hire all these top notch consultants on an idea that you haven't really proven yet. In my opinion. No, you would want to go out and sell, sell, sell and make sure that whatever you're selling the product or service is actually selling before you invest into it. If you're someone that you are a serial entrepreneur And you come up with what you think is the next great idea. And you don't want to spend the next two to three years trying to prove the idea. Maybe you invest more money in upfront to try to accelerate it faster. So it really depends on where you are in life and what your skill sets are. And that

Robert Plank 10:13 makes a lot of sense. So yeah, if someone tends to be younger and more cash strapped, then then that's one option. But then if they're if they're older, and they have more of that leveraged, and they're willing to also take more of the risk, and they can just kind of figure out like, where do they fit into that?

Speaker 2 10:30 Yeah, and it's never black and white area, there's always a gray area, I have a lot of people that do a combination of both. It's more, it's also a personal decision to how quickly you want to try to accelerate your business and how much risk you're willing to take on.

Robert Plank 10:45 Makes a lot of sense. And so as far as the the textbook business that you build, I mean, is that still going on? Or what did that turn into?

Speaker 2 10:52 It's not going on? I actually got out of that right when I started my Amazon store, because my Amazon store became profitable. And I also thought at the time that textbooks were going to go out of business because of all the ebooks. And that hasn't really happened yet, which I'm a little confused on how that hasn't happened yet. But I do think that like, I mean, if I was starting a new business, I wouldn't get into the textbook industry. I think that one day, it's going to go away. But I got rid of it because I didn't like lugging around big textbooks. dropship model was way more efficient. It was doing better. And I didn't see a future with textbooks.

Robert Plank 11:23 Okay, so then, so that led to the the Drop Shipping. And so how did that grow?

Speaker 2 11:28 Sure. So I added some awesome people. That team I surrounded myself with a bunch of people I found in college I made actually hired my first person before I was legally able to drink. So that was interesting. Made a lot of good hires bad hires, led me to when I graduated, I had a pretty significant business. I also had an internship that I kept along the way with Firestone that I had a job offer for. So I kind of had to decide, do I go the corporate route? The reason that I went to college, or do I go the entrepreneurial route, and in my mind, I'm all about calculated risk. So I was like, if this business is doing well, why not pursue it, I can always go back and apply for jobs later on. And I was still young. So I moved down to Florida with Connor and my other business partner, continued to grow this business ended up getting an office hiring full time employees. And a buddy of mine told me about Upwork, which is called oDesk. At the time, and I became obsessed with it, I wanted to build an oDesk army. And the reason I became obsessed with it wasn't just about that cheap labor, it was about efficiency. If I was paying someone $50,000 a year, and they were spending 25% of their time doing data entry work or easy work that could be done by someone cheaper. To me, that was a huge efficiency flaw. And I wanted to eliminate that as fast as possible. So I ended up building these huge remote armies to compliment by full time people and growing my Amazon business that way for years. Cool. And

Robert Plank 12:51 yeah, and I'm kind of on the same page with you as far as as far as the outsourcing thing, and what always, what always worries me a lot with people who you know, outsource or bring people on the team is they get, they get super crazy. And they're just hiring people just for the sake of it. And I'm, I'm kind of along the, on the same page with you there. And so, so yeah, so what it used to be called was oDesk. And now it's called it's Upwork. And so, so this is a site where anyone can hire people for any sort of like an hourly or per project task, right?

Speaker 2 13:26 Yeah. And again, I kind of saw the efficiencies in that I didn't, I didn't love it, I liked the end result sometimes, but it was hit or miss, you make that really, let's say you make a bad hire, not only could it hurt your company, but you also have to factor in the time that you wasted interviewing those people, because I'm in the mindset of hire slowly, fire quickly. So if I'm spending all these time interviewing people, that's time I could be spending doing sales or other situations, then you factor in training time that you put into them. And then at the end of the day, you still don't know if you're going to get a good hire. And then best case scenario, you've interviewed all these people, you put them through training, you get a really good hire, and then they put in their two weeks notice and you're like, oh my god, I'm right back where I started. And that's the kind of thing that can set your startup and your business back months at a time. So that's when I really started getting the idea of free up my new company.

Robert Plank 14:15 Cool. And so So I mean, what is free up? It's, it's just a matter of like, you vetted these upper people really well or like, so what is this company?

Speaker 2 14:24 Sure. So it severed the network. It's got nothing to do with up work we've got. So essentially, we get hundreds of applicants every week, we have a great interview process I created myself, we have 15 pages of communication guidelines our workers have to memorize and get tested on because we know how important communication is or I know on poor communication is you could have the most talented person in the world and if they can't communicate with you, and especially if they're not in the same building as you, it's going to be impossible for you to work together. So we vet all these people, we take the top 1% We make them available to our clients on a first come first served basis. And then we offer these workers we're not just outsourcing company where remote hiring company. So we have workers from five to $50 an hour about 40%, Philippines 40%, US 20% scattered throughout the world. And for every sales skill set and online business or E commerce, whether it's marketing, Amazon, eBay, graphic design, customer service, data entry, whatever it is, we have a US version and a non US workers available. First come first serve. Like I said, obviously, US people cost more. And my clients love it. Because once they're a client of mine, which is free, whenever a position opens up, or they need a short term project, they can request a worker have a worker within minutes or hours. Because we're not a recruitment agency. It's not like you tell us what you need, we go find it, we already have these people. And one cool thing about us is not only are we hands on to make sure you have a good experience with our workers, because we're all about our clients and customer care. But we're insurance against turnover. And to me, that's the biggest thing, insurer and turnover kills businesses, it's expensive, they can set you back in months at a time. So our workers rarely quit, because it's hard to get into our network. But if they do, we cover all retraining costs, we get you a new worker right away. And we make sure that you never take a step backwards for HR reasons. So that's really what we're all about is saving our clients time on the front end and protecting them on the backend.

Robert Plank 16:14 And that's awesome. And yet, as you were describing all that, I mean, it kind of made me flashback a little bit to, to some, like some of my adventures, hiring someone. And I guess that, you know, on one hand, I knew some people who tried to who try to recommend their guy to me, and, you know, their guy was the person that basically had the keys to everything. And I thought why don't really trust, you know, one person in some other country, you know, with all my passwords and things like that, or at least access to whatever kind of kind of websites and then on the other hand, I would go and hire people on Fiverr really quickly for like, really, you know, really quick, quick jobs. What I noticed with with Fiverr, in particular was I'd have to hire like two or three or four people just to get the one, you know, cover or the one result or whatever that I was hiring for. And then in the past, I have used oDesk and Upwork. But then the problem with that was the exact hiring process that you that you described, where if I wanted to hire someone to be a transcriptionist, I have to start off to post the job and get about you know, 50 or 100 applicants up to narrowed down to 20 and interviewed 10 and get it down to the top three. And then next thing I know, it's two weeks later, and I spent maybe five or 10 hours just to hire the person, just I mean, now I'm 10 hours put in just to be at zero to now pay a person, a monthly fee. And so that sounds like this, this free up service shortcuts, all of that, is that right?

Speaker 2 17:37 Yeah. And I'm all about valuing your time. I mean, I hope you value your time in the hundreds I know most of my clients do. And I do as well. I mean, if you take that situation, and you were kind of free up, you're like Nathan, I need a transit trips business, they need to be able to do this. And this within an hour. I'm like, here's a guy, this is a guy who my other clients have used for a long period of time he's been free up, he's proven, and he just gets right to work does work for you, let's say worst case scenario, he does a bad job or below par, I'm going to give you a credit for it, I'm going to be like, You know what, here's another guy. And if we don't get it right the first time, which 99% of the time we do, we almost always get it right the second time. Unfortunately, freelancing isn't a one size fits all industry. But we've gotten pretty good at it. So we kind of change the experience from being that negative hassle, like, Oh, crap, I have to hire someone again to okay, this is fast and easy. And now that I finished this project, let's focus on the next step.

Robert Plank 18:29 Right and kind of relating back to our examples with your textbook thing or with Uber or whatever the existing system of, for example, going to a Fiverr going into an upper get something where everyone does it because they have to, but the experience is not great. And now you're kind of cutting out the middleman and having these having the best of both worlds, basically, where you have these workers that are trained that are good. And like you said, there's the turnover aspect so that even if there's someone that kind of goes away, for whatever reason, you can just switch out for someone else. And so what really, what really interests me is that you're kind of describing some of the the skills that some of these that these workers have. And so it's not just the usual skills like you know, answer customer support tickets or transcriptionist. But it sounds like you have some really specialized skills, especially with like the E commerce stuff. Is that right?

Speaker 2 19:24 Yeah. So I mean, if you we kind of divided up into four things, you got business operations, ecommerce marketing, and then web development. We don't do bookkeeping or coding. If you think of business operations, anything from data entry to research, Excel writing, lead generation translations, I would throw in there if you move over to ecommerce, all the different marketplaces whether it's Amazon, eBay or smaller ones like Newegg, Sears, or Walmart, which is a big one, and then anything that goes along with those customer service listing, SEO optimization, which is all different for different websites, and we have everyone from those lower level people And then you can put into systems all the way up to top notch experts that have been selling for 15 years. So you can get expertise with no minimums, on paying them at an hourly rate. And then if you move to marketing, you've got social media, which is a combination of management content and ads, graphic designers, Google AdWords, video editing, all that kind of stuff. And then web development, any kind of WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, Wix and all that. And we'll hopefully get into coding next year, although hiring developers is a whole nother animal. But that's really all the skill sets that we offer.

Robert Plank 20:33 Awesome. So can you kind of walk me through like a case study or something where, where you had a client who had all these kinds of needs, and you were able to just plug in these workers into their business for them?

Speaker 2 20:43 Yeah, so there's actually a case study right in my website, free app.com, a buddy of mine, that was one of my first clients who gave me a shot when I was first starting, free up be done. And you can kind of view him from the beginning, he started a dropship, Amazon business, which was very similar to what I did, which is almost the perfect client for me to start off with. And I solely gave him people to change his pricing. Because if you know anything about Amazon, it's all about changing prices and getting the buy box, inputted people into his customer care team so that he didn't have to answer every email, and he could free up his time into finding additional products to sell and all that I have top notch consultants that are pretty much at his call whenever he needs them whenever he runs into a funk or has an issue with any kind of FDA or anything like that. And then it's supported with other like data entry, people who can do more of the business specific tasks that are more relevant to his business, whether it's recording invoices, or getting information to his bookkeeper, stuff like that. So he's got this great group of workers that all came from free up, that all do different tasks that help him not only free up his time, but the key to freeing up your time is to focus on sales and marketing, because that's what it's all about.

Robert Plank 21:56 Cool. So So yeah, and it sounds like even like your thought process as far as, as all that stuff was, you had the whole support system in place. So not just the data entry, and not just all the, like the price research and stuff. But even even to the extent where if if he got stuck, he'd have someone to talk to.

Speaker 2 22:15 Exactly. And if you think of my these big shock consultants, right, they make 50 bucks an hour 30 to 50 bucks an hour, and they got their bigger clients who they're doing consistent work for. And then they'll also have smaller clients who might hire them for an hour here and an hour there. And they love it because they're getting constant work. And we try to book them up as much as possible. But the other clients like it, because they don't have to go out and hire a service with minimums. They can just use people when they needed. And obviously, there's going to be different scheduling stuff. We tried to make it work. And if that person's booked that week, we'll get them someone else. But it really works great for all partners.

Robert Plank 22:48 I mean, yeah, it's your sounds like it. And so as far as we're winding down this call, and if people are, are looking into doing more outsourcing, and maybe even people who might be headed your way, what's a big mistake that people are making with outsourcing that they should be avoiding?

Speaker 2 23:05 Yeah, don't do one on one training, unless you have some kind of training doc, some kind of YouTube videos, and you're just using that training as a fine tuning. The people that make the biggest mistake are the people like you mentioned, you put one person in charge of their whole business, and then that person puts in their two weeks notice and it sets it back six months, or the people that do the one on one training and spend their time which again, value your own time, and then have nothing for the worker to look back on. And then if that worker does quit, they have to do the one on one training again. So make sure you diversify your team so that if someone leaves, they're not replaceable, and make sure you have the training and the systems in writing. So it takes up less of your time that you should value highly.

Robert Plank 23:44 And that's a good one. I like that advice is to Yeah, so even if you're saying even if you're training someone have some way of recording that or some notes for that. So that way, if they quit, you can just bring on the next person and that works already done.

Speaker 2 23:58 Exactly. You want to try to reduce whatever. Just imagine that any person in your company could quit at any given moment. Even someone who you're best friends with someone who's been there for years, anyone can always quit, how replaceable are the people on your team? And if they're not, you have to work overtime to make them less or more and more replaceable.

Robert Plank 24:17 That's a good way of looking at that. And I like that. And so where can people go to find out more about you and about free up and all this cool stuff?

Speaker 2 24:24 Yes, you can check out free app.com We also have a blog where we're always talking about e commerce hiring remote workers, and all the stuff that goes with it manager and managing building a culture hiring, training and all that kind of stuff right on our website, free app.com You can actually book a meeting with me if you want to talk about your needs, or you can sign up as a free up client. It's free. There's no upfront payment. We're pretty much there to give you workers that you pay hourly for as much or as little as you want. It's super easy to sign up really easy to set up a meeting with me or one of my assistants. And yeah, I mean we'd love to talk to you about your story and how We can help you.

Robert Plank 25:01 Awesome. And that is free up with three E's, right?

Unknown Speaker 25:04 Yep. 30 cents for ecommerce.

Robert Plank 25:07 What's Oh, okay, that finally Okay, so that's fr, e up calm just to make sure if people are listening in, they go to free up.com. Like, where's the website? It's free ef.com. And then and that's the blog. And that's the link to get the meeting with you and all that cool stuff. So, I mean, I'm really appreciative of you coming by Nathan and talking to us about this thing that a lot of people it sounds like people will kind of do it incorrectly. Or maybe they go one of the two extremes, and maybe they dread doing it. But it sounds like any business that wants to scale or anyone who wants to, you know, have more free time or make more money or get to that next level needs to get into some kind of outsourcing. And it sounds like this free up service gets around a lot of the usual problems that happened with with outsourcing. So I'm really glad that you came by and set us straight and explained your thought process and your story. So thanks for stopping by the show today, Nathan.

Speaker 2 26:04 Definitely, and you're very welcome. Anyone that signs up, and I'll send you an affiliate link or anyone that you dropped your name when they sign up will get a $10 credit towards your account. So free $10 worth of work you can try us out and see for yourself.

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